Sailosi Tagicakibau will benefit hugely from his loan spell with South African Super 15 side DHL Stormers, insists his London Irish team-mate Jebb Sinclair.

After failing to feature for Exiles much this season, Tagicakibau has followed the same route to Cape Town that Sinclair took in search of game time two years ago.

It was an experience that helped transform the Canadian forward from raw rookie into a first-team regular.

And Sinclair is now expecting Stormers to give 31-year-old Tagicakibau a new lease of life.

He said: “Hopefully he’s drinking in the experience and will start to enjoy his rugby again and we will see the Losi we saw three or four years ago when he was unstoppable.”

Tagicakibau, who is due back at Irish for the final season of his contract later this year, scored his first try for Stormers after coming on as a replacement in their biggest win of the season last Saturday.

He put the finishing touch on a 33-0 thrashing of the Bloemfontein-based Cheetahs when he grounded the ball from a chip kick.

Afterwards Tagicakibau tweeted: “Good to finally score at Newlands, but most of all to get the win!!”

It was certainly a happier experience than his first game at Stormers’ ground nine years ago when he suffered a broken leg while playing for the Chiefs.

Later that year Tagicakibau left the New Zealand side to come to the UK and join Irish.

He is expected to start on the right wing for Stormers against the Sharks in Durban tomorrow.

But although the Stormers have climbed off the bottom of the table after winning three of their four matches this month, they have no chance of qualifying for the finals.

Sinclair believes that Tagicakibau, known as Losi to his team-mates, will find it more difficult than he did to make his mark in South Africa.

He said: “Sometimes it is harder for a wing to get into the game and get the touches. He has to rely on so many other people to bring him into the game, even when he is looking for work.

“It is quite hard sometimes, depending on the weather and the players inside of him.”

“But so much of what I got out of it was not about the rugby, but the people, the culture. Feeding off that and learning off that. That will help so much.”

Sinclair enjoyed his spell in South Africa to such an extent that he stayed on after Stormers’ 2012 Super League hopes were dashed by a semi-final defeat to Sharks.

And he helped gain revenge for Cape Town by playing his part in Western Province’s 25-18 win over Natal Sharks in that year’s Currie Cup final.

He said: “I went down there very unconfident in myself. I had been injured for three or four months (at London Irish) and had not played well in my two or three return games.

“I’d had my first major injury (a broken thumb) and I was at a new team where I had only played a handful of games.

“There was a lot of factors that contributed to playing fairly poorly before I left.

“I went down there and everyone was saying ‘What’s a Canadian doing playing in South Africa?’ He’s gonna fail. All I had to do was not fail. It was pretty easy.

“That took a lot of pressure off and I went right back to the basics – tackling and running straight.

“Stormers had Jaques Nienaber, one of the best defensive coaches in union.

“Being able to work under him and some of the things he puts in place – systems and things like ‘when you see this, put your head here, your hands here, lock up the ball’. It was little tricks like that that you can bring back.”

Sinclair, who made 24 appearances for Irish last season, added: “In the last weeks of the season we really came off the line hard and fast and got off the choke tackles.

“That was what we used down at the Stormers. I enjoyed the last few weeks because it felt more natural to me.”